


things you said

by all_these_ghosts



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Season 2, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 23:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7954015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/all_these_ghosts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>three post-ep ficlets from the "things you said" prompt on tumblr: 1) millennium, 2) red museum, 3) orison</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 52) things you said with my lips on your neck

**Author's Note:**

> More things I put on Tumblr and not here...now here! These are all from that list of "things you said" prompts that went around a while back.

Scully parks on the street outside his building. “I’ll walk you up,” she says, grabbing his duffle bag from the backseat.

He considers protesting - injured or not, he is more than capable of getting into his apartment by himself - but he kissed her half an hour ago, and whatever magic made that happen might still be lingering.

Inside his apartment it’s dark except for the fish tank, but neither of them move to turn on the lights. It might break the spell. It might transport them back to real life, where there are rules and consequences.

Scully shrugs off her jacket and drops his bag by the couch. “Can I get you anything before I go?”

After a moment of consideration, Mulder opts for a high-variance strategy. With his good arm he gestures toward his sling. “I uh, could use some help getting my shirt off.” Sure, he _could_ get it off by himself, but it would be a lot harder. And a lot less fun.

From her sharp inhale, he thinks this might pan out really well. He was always good at gambling.

“Of course,” she says, her voice steady. Good old Scully. He wouldn’t expect any less.

But her hands aren’t so steady when she pushes his t-shirt up his torso with her fingers, letting her palms brush his skin. Her hands are still cold from the air outside.

He is staring down at her, brazenly, but she’s focused on her work. Once his t-shirt is bunched up under his armpits she pulls the fabric over his good arm. He ducks his head out of the shirt, too, so that all the fabric hangs from his right shoulder.

Her hands, doctor’s hands, unclasp the sling. “Don’t move your arm,” Scully commands, and Mulder obeys, like he could do anything else. Carefully she finishes removing his shirt, then re-attaches the sling.

She could step away, but she doesn’t. Instead she runs her hands along his bare skin, from his hipbones all the way to his shoulders, her fingers spread out wide. Ten seconds ago she was Dr. Scully, but this is clearly personal. “See,” she says quietly, “it’s easy.”

“Scully,” he says, and he hears her breath hitch, “I’m gonna kiss you again.” 

Her eyes stay locked on his; her tongue darts out to wet her lips. God, her tongue. He’s getting distracted.

He leans just a little further in, Scully’s perfect nose brushing his. If she moved at all their lips would touch, but he doesn’t take that shit for granted anymore. His brain produces a phantom buzz, just to torture him. He says her name again, dragging out the sounds.

She’s the one who finally closes that last breath of space, and her fierceness catches him by surprise, her mouth opening to his. He traces her lips with his tongue, catches the lingering sweetness there. It’s New Year’s Eve and there is a bottle of champagne somewhere in this apartment, but he’s already drunk on the way she tastes. And the painkillers.

Her hands are still on his chest, pressed between them. He walks her back to the wall without breaking their kiss, using his good arm to lift her up and his body weight to keep her in place. He already has a shoulder injury, he doesn’t need a crick in his neck. 

Suddenly they are eye to eye, and it’s a good thing she’s so short. Making this much direct eye contact with Dana Scully is definitely hazardous.

He sucks her earlobe into his mouth and she moans as he traces his lips down the side of her neck. Those bite marks still look angry, though they’ve started to fade. He nuzzles the space where her neck meets her shoulder. Every time his stubbled chin brushes her skin she shudders and digs her nails into his back. He could learn this, he could learn her. “Is this okay?” he asks, nipping gently at her shoulder, trying not to add a bite mark of his own.

She hums some kind of affirmative noise and he lets his good hand wander up the front of her shirt. “Mulder,” she says, breathless, and he thinks, _I did that_. Scully’s legs are wrapped around his waist, her hands are in his hair and she’s exhaling his name like smoke and he knows _exactly_ where the fire is – and then she says, still breathless, “Maybe we should slow down.”

It slips out before he can stop himself. “Really?” He looks up and her expression is entirely serious, little lines forming between her eyebrows. His forehead drops to her shoulder again and he groans. _Eight years_ , he thinks, _it’s been eight years. Here’s your moment, champ_. His voice is rough. “Scully, I’ve been thinking about this since the time you came into my motel room to show me that mosquito bite.”

She eyes him. She does not, to his immense relief, move away; if anything, her legs tighten around him. “You have not.”

“I really, really have.” His entire body is a rubber band stretched taut and ready to snap.

When she lets him run his tongue along her collarbone, he assumes he’s in the clear, but - as usual - Scully has one more objection. “What happens tomorrow?” She’s chewing on her lip, like they hadn’t made this decision years ago, like they haven’t been making it over and over ever since.

“Tomorrow,” he says, moving his head just enough to kiss her on the mouth, firmly, “is Saturday.”

“It’s one in the morning, Mulder, today is Saturday,” she says, but now he knows that she just wants to argue, because she’s taking off her shirt, his week-late Christmas miracle.

He steps back just enough to let her slide down him so her feet are on the ground again. Her hand is finally warm as he leads her into his bedroom. “Fine. Tomorrow is Sunday. And Monday is a federal holiday.”

“Then what happens on Tuesday?” As she says this she’s stepping out of her pants, leaving them in a puddle on the floor. He makes a mental note: _Scully is secretly messy_. By now she’s down to just her bra and underwear, cotton and unmatching and unquestionably the sexiest thing he has ever seen. He still can’t believe this is really happening, but he’s got a few days to get used to the idea.

His eyes are dark. “I don’t know,” he says. “But I wanna find out.”

She presses herself against him and he curses his injured arm, stuck in the middle. They have fucking terrible timing. Her hands smooth up and down his sides, then migrate to his waist. He holds himself completely still as she runs her fingers just along the inside of his waistband until they meet in the middle.

“Do you need help with these, too?” she asks, fingers toying at the button of his jeans, and he groans under her touch. 

She’s grinning at him, playful, and he wants this Scully too, he wants everything. He says, “I thought you’d never ask.”

Maybe not such bad timing after all.


	2. 7) things you said while we were driving

Wisconsin falls away while she watches, her forehead pressed against the window. Mulder’s driving - as usual - but right now she doesn’t mind so much. The setting sun is golden on the hills, and the houses and barns look like cut-outs from a children’s book, too picturesque to be real. She refuses to see what is real: the blood and bones inside them. The rot in their foundations.

There are days now when she has to close her eyes to all of the horrors in the world, so many more than she ever imagined. She hasn’t figured out yet how to keep them open to beauty.

“It’s pretty here,” she says, blandly.

He looks at her too hard and too long. “Yeah, it is.” His voice is soft, and she’s transported back to that barbecue place from a few nights ago, where he’d reached out so casually to wipe the sauce from the corner of her mouth. He does that sort of thing all the time, and she never knows what to make of it. If he’s attracted to her, if he’s taking care of her, if he acts like that with all his co-workers.

Or maybe he’s just fucking with her, but she doesn’t think so. Her mother told her that he’d worn her necklace when she was missing.

“This thing is big, Scully,” he says, and where he would normally sound excited, he just sounds sad. “Those kids.”

His expression is bleak. She doesn’t know what make of him when he’s like this, either: one minute he’s excited, talking a mile a minute and waving his arms around; the next he’s sunk into a deep malaise. His shoulders look heavy. She wonders if she could work the tension out of them with her fingers, and blushes. It would be easier if she thought he’d say no.

“Pull over for a sec.”

He does it without questioning her, but the questions are in his eyes when she gets out of the car.

“Mulder, look,” she says quietly. He comes up behind her, and she doesn’t have to look to know exactly where he’s standing. She can just feel him there, and she wonders when that happened.

“What am I looking at, Scully?”

On impulse, she reaches out and slips her hand through his. He doesn’t flinch, but through that same sixth sense she feels him wonder.

The cloud-streaked sky. The sun low on the horizon coloring everything pastel and casting shadows that go on for miles. The hills are green and green forever. Since she started working with him she’s spent countless hours on country roads in middle America, but she has never noticed any of the good.

Mulder is looking out too now and she sees the lines around his eyes soften. Scully wonders what he would look like if he stopped searching, just for a moment; she wonders what he would look like if he forgave himself.

“We’re always driving, Mulder,” she says. “Sometimes you have to stop for a minute.”

She squeezes his hand and then lets it go, and they walk back separately to the car. Something about the angle of the light makes their shadows merge, and that, too, seems right.

When they’ve been back on the road a while he says, “I’m glad you came back,” and steals a glance at her. She smiles and rests her head on the window again, letting herself drift off to the static hum of the radio, the low drone of tires on concrete.

Just before she falls asleep she hears him again, even quieter: “I’m glad you came back to me.”


	3. 31) things you said while I cried in your arms

He doesn’t want to hover. Scully is strong, he tells himself. She’ll be fine.

“Do you want to watch TV?” he asks, and when she nods he settles onto the couch. She joins him, dwarfed by his bathrobe. Her thigh presses against his.

Mulder flips through a few sports channels. Baseball games that don’t matter, college basketball games that do. Late-season hockey. For hours they listen to the soft drone of the announcers, and he doesn’t look at her hands. What have we done, he wonders. What have I made you?

Past midnight he looks over at her to see her eyelids drooping. “Scully,” he says quietly, so he won’t startle her, “you should probably go to bed.”

She lifts her head off his shoulder. “I’m not going to be able to sleep.”

“I know. Still.”

Sighing, she rises off the couch and heads into the bedroom. He follows a few steps behind, uncertain, but she doesn’t send him away.

With the lights off they both undress. Scully brought pajamas, he saw her stuff them into her duffle bag, but instead she grabs a T-shirt from the floor and pulls it on. He trades his jeans for pajama pants and settles next to her on the bed.

Scully curls up against him, her head on his shoulder, arms tucked against her chest. Even with the blankets pulled up to her shoulders she’s still shivering; even when he wraps his arm around her narrow shoulders. She says, “You don’t have to lie for me.”

A pause. “I know. But I will,” Mulder says finally. “Always.”

“I shot him,” she says, not looking at him. “I can’t let that go. You were there, we could have taken him into custody, and instead I—what kind of person does that? Mulder, I’m not that kind of —I didn’t think I was—“

Silence sneaks up on them. They breathe in tandem, in silence, in darkness. Scully could be dead, but she’s not. She is here, and if she’d had to kill a hundred men for it, he can’t convince himself that it matters.

At some point he falls asleep and dreams. He enters Scully’s apartment to find her lying on the floor, blood soaking into her torn clothes. The color of her hair is not so different, not different enough. Donnie Pfaster stands over her with a knife in his hands, Donnie Pfaster has a gun, Donnie Pfaster is a nightmare monster brought to horrible life and in Mulder’s dreams he watches Scully die, he watches her dead, red blood and red hair and she looks so small—

His body jolts him awake, and Scully is in his bed. Warm. Breathing. Looking almost peaceful, and he doesn’t want to disturb her so he pads through his apartment to the bathroom.

In the mirror he looks haggard and exhausted, and he feels even worse. He knows their jobs are dangerous, but it’s never felt so immediate. Blood on her face, the sound of a gunshot. Scully has perfect aim but she didn’t need it, not for that shot.

In the mirror he’s crying, and he doesn’t remember how or when that happened. He looks away. Bone-tired, he slips to the floor, back against the cabinet with his legs stretched out long in front of him.

Scully’s voice is soft outside the door. “Mulder?”

He presses his palms to his eyes. She’s been through enough; he’s not going to make her comfort him. “Yeah,” he says, but it comes out as a choking noise.

“I’m gonna come in, okay?” Scully opens the door and sees him there, head in his hands. She sits down next to him. Straight-legged his feet almost touch the wall, but hers get just as far as his shins. She wraps her arm around his waist and he shudders an exhale.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Scully tugs on his waist so that he turns toward her, and they wrap around each other and he’s shaking and he doesn’t want to be shaking, and he’s crying but he’s pretty sure she is too, and how the fuck did they get here, holding each other on the bathroom floor trying to erase the last twelve hours. The metallic tang of blood and bullets. He whispers her name into her neck and holds her tighter.

“We’re okay,” she whispers, and he doesn’t know if she’s saying it for him or for herself. “We’re okay.”


End file.
